Ripple Soars as Wider Crypto Markets See Flush of Green
Thursday, September 20: virtually all of the large-market-cap cryptocurrencies are in the green today, posting solid gains across the board, as data from Coin360 data shows.
Market visualization from Coin360
After a volatile week, Bitcoin (BTC) rebounded past the $6,400 mark yesterday night, hitting as high as $6,450 before correcting slightly and then trading sideways to seal its current trading price of $6,410. Bitcoin’s 24-hour growth is at 1.8 percent, according to Cointelegraph’s Bitcoin Price Index.
On the week, the top coin is up around 1.1 percent, but down by 1.2 percent on its monthly chart.
Bitcoin’s 7-day price chart. Source: Cointelegraph Bitcoin Price Index
After taking a price hit earlier this week, Ethereum (ETH) has seen a couple of days of gradual recovery, and is up a solid 2.6 percent on the day to trade at $211 at press time. The altcoin nonetheless remains shy of its intra-week high at around $225 September 15.
On its weekly chart, Ethereum is up a strong 16 percent, with monthly losses closed down to around 29.15 percent.
Ethereum’s 7-day price chart. Source: Cointelegraph's Ethereum Price Index
Ripple (XRP), ranked 3rd largest crypto on CoinMarketCap, has skyrocketed past other coins to post a striking 15.3 percentage gain on the day to trade at $0.36, according to Cointelegraph's Ripple Price Index. Ripple’s major uptick kicked in September 18, and after a couple of days of consolidation the asset has seen a second major upswing today.
Bullish news for the asset this week has included hints that the firm has been making strides toward the launch of its liquidity solution xRapid, which could be set to launch “within a month or so.” Yesterday, PNC, which is ranked among the top ten U.S. banks, revealed it will be using RippleNet to process international payments for its customers.
Ripple’s 7-day price chart. Source: Cointelegraph's Ripple Price Index
Among the other top ten coins on CoinMarketCap, all are in the green, with EOS (EOS), ranked 5th, seeing strong gains of 5.57 percent to trade at $5.30 and Cardano (ADA) up fractionally more, growing 5.8 percent on the day to trade at $0.07.
Anonymity-oriented alt Monero (XMR), ranked 10th, is also up a solid 3.67 percent at $112.31 and Stellar (XLM) is up 3.3 percent to trade at $0.21.
Among the top twenty, coins are also seeing virtually uniform green, with only NEM (XEM) down a mild 1.12 percent on the day. Tron (TRX) is the strongest top twenty performing coin on the day, up 5.55 percent to trade at $0.02 at press time. Other top twenty gains are within a solid 2.5-4 percent range.
Total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies is currently around $203.3 billion, up $10 billion from its brief plummet yesterday evening to around $193.3 billion.
7-day chart of the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies from CoinMarketCap
Cybersecurity matters are making headlines this week, with last night seeing the reported hacking of $59 million worth of cryptocurrencies from minor Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Zaif.
Bitcoin Core has also released an update following the recent detection of a vulnerability in the software, which reportedly could have been exploited by an attacker at a cost of just 12.5 Bitcoin (around $80,000 as of at press time) to crash the network.
Europol has this week released the fifth edition of its Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA), which predicted that while Bitcoin is still most popular among cybercriminals, anonymity-focused altcoins that offer the protection of “stealth addresses” are likely to gain increasing traction.
A report from Japan’s National Police Agency (NPA) today revealed that the country has lost a staggering ¥60 billion ($540 million) this year in crypto-related thefts, the lion’s share of which was stolen in January’s notorious Coincheck hack. NPA also revealed that the number of reported incidents involving crypto thefts during the first half of this year is triple the figure reported for the same time period in 2017.